On Wednesday 3rd November, sixteen Year 7 and 8 pupils along with Mrs Ackroyd and myself travelled up to Birmingham to take part in this year’s Shakespeare Schools Festival.  Nerves were running high, but everyone was very excited. 

The week before the cast had spent the second week of half-term at Tile House Mansion rehearsing hard each day to produce a 30 minute version of Shakespeare’s popular tragedy. This meant getting to grips with the language and understanding their characters, mastering sword fighting, as well as designing and making costumes, puppets, and even a papier mache head of one of the cast (complete with blood and gore!).

It was hard work but their focus and commitment was outstanding: and more importantly they all enjoyed it.  One highlight of the week was a visit from David Williamson, father of one of the cast, who had performed in Macbeth with Peter O’Toole in 1980.  He gave them some great tips and even got them performing a key scene in the style of Bruno from Strictly Come Dancing!

The day in Birmingham was definitely an experience.  We were performing at The Old Rep Theatre, a 100-year-old, 383-seat theatre and was, for most of them, the biggest venue they had ever performed in.  We arrived in time to eat our lunch in the rehearsal room at the top of the tall, narrow, building.  We were spending the afternoon with another school, and after a quick familiarisation with the stage  and auditorium, we went to our two assigned dressing rooms to relax for an hour.  While we did this the other school had their technical rehearsal.  We then went into the auditorium to watch the school’s dress rehearsal of A Comedy of Errors.  

Then it was our turn.  The stage was bigger than our rehearsal space, some scenes needed to be adjusted, and the pupils had to be made aware of the location of spotlights which we were obviously not able to plan for exactly in school.  They all did this brilliantly and took on board everything they were told.  Then the other school came down to watch our dress rehearsal. 

After a quick break for tea, we were joined by two other schools who would also be performing but had already undertaken their rehearsals in the morning. 

Nerves were rasied as the audience started to arrive and we were taken to our seats in the Circle where we were going to watch the first half.  We soon found that we were surrounded by parents who had travelled up to watch.  The two plays in the first half were Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest. Both plays were outstanding and really encouraged our pupils to up their game. During the interval we went to our dressing rooms and waited while the third school performed and finally it was our turn. As Mrs Ackroyd and I watched nervously from the wings, knowing that we could do no more, the music started and the cast stepped onto the stage.